‘All right, all right!’ answered her son, frowning.
His deaf sister shouted to attract his attention. She pointed to her head and the palm of her hand, to indicate the shaved head of a Chechen. Then she frowned, and pretending to aim with a gun, she shrieked and began rapidly humming and shaking her head. This meant that Lukashka should kill another Chechen.
Lukashka understood. He smiled, and shifting the gun at his back under his cloak stepped lightly and rapidly, and soon disappeared in the thick mist.
The old woman, having stood a little while at the gate, returned silently to the hut and immediately began working.
Chapter 18
Lukasha returned to the cordon and at the same time Daddy Eroshka whistled to his dogs and, climbing over his wattle fence, went to Olenin’s lodging, passing by the back of the houses (he disliked meeting women before going out hunting or shooting). He found Olenin still asleep, and even Vanyusha, though awake, was still in bed and looking round the room considering whether it was not time to get up, when Daddy Eroshka, gun on shoulder and in full hunter’s trappings, opened the door.
‘A cudgel!’ he shouted in his deep voice. ‘An alarm! The Chechens are upon us! Ivan! get the samovar ready for your master, and get up yourself — quick,’ cried the old man. ‘That’s our way, my good man! Why even the girls are already up! Look out of the window. See, she’s going for water and you’re still sleeping!’
Olenin awoke and jumped up, feeling fresh and lighthearted at the sight of the old man and at the sound of his voice.
‘Quick, Vanyusha, quick!’ he cried.
‘Is that the way you go hunting?’ said the old man. ‘Others are having their breakfast and you are asleep! Lyam! Here!’ he called to his dog. ‘Is your gun ready?’ he shouted, as loud as if a whole crowd were in the hut.
‘Well, it’s true I’m guilty, but it can’t be helped! The powder, Vanyusha, and the wads!’ said Olenin.
‘A fine!’ shouted the old man.
‘Du tay voulay vou?’ asked Vanyusha, grinning.
‘You’re not one of us — your gabble is not like our speech, you devil!’ the old man shouted at Vanyusha, showing the stumps of his teeth.
‘A first offence must be forgiven,’ said Olenin playfully, drawing on his high boots.
‘The first offence shall be forgiven,’ answered Eroshka, ‘but if you oversleep another time you’ll be fined a pail of chikhir. When it gets warmer you won’t find the deer.’
‘And even if we do find him he is wiser than we are,’ said Olenin, repeating the words spoken by the old man the evening before, ‘and you can’t deceive him!’
‘Yes, laugh away! You kill one first, and then you may talk. Now then, hurry up! Look, there’s the master himself coming to see you,’ added Eroshka, looking out of the window. ‘Just see how he’s got himself up. He’s put on a new coat so that you should see that he’s an officer. Ah, these people, these people!’
Sure enough Vanyusha came in and announced that the master of the house wished to see Olenin.
‘L’arjan!’ he remarked profoundly, to forewarn his master of the meaning of this visitation. Following him, the master of the house in a new Circassian coat with an officer’s stripes on the shoulders and with polished boots (quite exceptional among Cossacks) entered the room, swaying from side to side, and congratulated his lodger on his safe arrival.
The cornet, Elias Vasilich, was an educated Cossack. He had been to Russia proper, was a regimental schoolteacher, and above all he was noble. He wished to appear noble, but one could not help feeling beneath his grotesque pretence of polish, his affectation, his self-confidence, and his absurd way of speaking, he was just the same as Daddy Eroshka. This could also be clearly seen by his sunburnt face and his hands and his red nose. Olenin asked him to sit down.
‘Good morning. Father Elias Vasilich,’ said Eroshka, rising with (or so it seemed to Olenin) an ironically low bow.
‘Good morning. Daddy. So you’re here already,’ said the cornet, with a careless nod.
The cornet was a man of about forty, with a grey pointed beard, skinny and lean, but handsome and very fresh-looking for his age. Having come to see Olenin he was evidently afraid of being taken for an ordinary Cossack, and wanted to let Olenin feel his importance from the first.
‘That’s our Egyptian Nimrod,’ he remarked, addressing Olenin and pointing to the old man with a self-satisfied smile. ‘A mighty hunter before the Lord! He’s our foremost man on every hand. You’ve already been pleased to get acquainted with him.’
Daddy Eroshka gazed at his feet in their shoes of wet raw hide and shook his head thoughtfully at the cornet’s ability and learning, and muttered to himself: ‘Gyptian Nimvrod! What things he invents!’
‘Yes, you see we mean to go hunting,’ answered Olenin.
‘Yes, sir, exactly,’ said the cornet, ‘but I have a small business with you.’
‘What do you want?’
‘Seeing that you are a gentleman,’ began the cornet, ‘and as I may understand myself to be in the rank of an officer too, and therefore we may always progressively negotiate, as gentlemen do.’ (He stopped and looked with a smile at Olenin and at the old man.) ‘But if you have the desire with my consent, then, as my wife is a foolish woman of our class, she could not quite comprehend your words of yesterday’s date. Therefore my quarters might be let for six rubles to the Regimental Adjutant, without the stables; but I can always avert that from myself free of charge. But, as you desire, therefore I, being myself of an officer’s rank, can come to an agreement with you in everything personally, as an inhabitant of this district, not according to our customs, but can maintain the conditions in every way... ‘
‘Speaks clearly!’ muttered the old man.
The cornet continued in the same strain for a long time. At last, not without difficulty, Olenin gathered that the cornet wished to let his rooms to him, Olenin, for six rubles a month. The latter gladly agreed to this, and offered his visitor a glass of tea. The cornet declined it.
‘According to our silly custom we consider it a sort of sin to drink out of a “worldly” tumbler,’ he said. ‘Though, of course, with my education I may understand, but my wife from her human weakness... ‘
‘Well then, will you have some tea?’
‘If you will permit me, I will bring my own particular glass,’ answered the cornet, and stepped out into the porch.
‘Bring me my glass!’ he cried.
In a few minutes the door opened and a young sunburnt arm in a print sleeve thrust itself in, holding a tumbler in the hand. The cornet went up, took it, and whispered something to his daughter. Olenin poured tea for the cornet into the latter’s own ‘particular’ glass, and for Eroshka into a ‘worldly’ glass.
‘However, I do not desire to detain you,’ said the cornet, scalding his lips and emptying his tumbler. ‘I too have a great liking for fishing, and I am here, so to say, only on leave of absence for recreation from my duties. I too have the desire to tempt fortune and see whether some Gifts of the Terek may not fall to my share. I hope you too will come and see us and have a drink of our wine, according to the custom of our village,’ he added.
The cornet bowed, shook hands with Olenin, and went out. While Olenin was getting ready, he heard the cornet giving orders to his family in an authoritative and sensible tone, and a few minutes later he saw him pass by the window in a tattered